Founder and director of Pacific Manta Research Group, Dr. Robert Rubin, has been instrumental in understanding the manta ray. Their studies of oceanic manta rays in the Pacific Ocean span more than three decades. One of the most remarkable discoveries involves the manta ray’s unique ability to warm their brains. @manta.musings We are only just beginning to understand how intelligent manta rays are . Dr. Rubin from Pacific Manta Research Group always has the best manta ray facts. ♬ Luminary – Joel Sunny As a cold-blooded fish, manta rays are related to sharks but have only been prevalent for 5 million years. The giant manta ray can have a wingspan of up to 26 feet. Dr. Rubin describes his first encounter with a ray during a TEDx Talk on manta ray brains. After a six-hour interaction with a female ray, he was in love. He founded the research group and is now one of the leading authorities on the species. Manta rays have the largest brains of all fish. They are very intelligent and capable of complex thought. They work together cooperatively to manipulate their environment to survive. Mantas can recognize themselves in a mirror and notice changes such as a tag or scar. They can also recognize human differences and will remember interactions with specific divers. Image from Wikimedia Commons. Somehow, this cold-blooded creature has evolved with the ability to heat its brain. As Dr. Rubin explains, heating the brain is thought to be a significant factor in the intelligence level of these animals. Molecules move faster in warm environments. The logical conclusion is that the brain can function and process information faster by heating the brain. From his first encounter with “Stringfellow,” Dr. Rubin has dedicated his life to studying mantas. Although we don’t understand much about sea life, scientists learn more daily. Studying manta brains may give us a greater insight into life under the sea. Please share. You can find the source of this story’s featured image here. The post Manta Rays Are Cold Blooded… So Why Do They Have Warm Brains? appeared first on InspireMore.

One of the more uplifting economic bubbles you’ll read about, a feature in the Japan Times catalogs how Americans are just silly for stationery. Japanese artisan notebook and stationery providers have been more than happy to fulfill this export niche, and one company in particular has produced a diary/planner that has captivated American journalers. But […] The post Think Kids Are Addicted to Phones? US ‘Stationery Nerds’ Are Fueling a Japanese Notebook Boom appeared first on Good News Network.

A couple who owns a farm in Arizona decided to rescue an orphaned baby goat, but it was their deaf dog who stepped up and decided to adopt the kid. The couple, known as “Farm of Milk and Honey” on TikTok shared the heartwarming story of how their deaf Pit Bull dog, Evie, decided to adopt an orphaned baby goat, later named by the couple as Branch. On November 24, Farm of Milk and Honey shared a video of an orphaned baby goat on their TikTok account. The caption on the video read, “PLEASE watch this video for 60 seconds so my wife thinks bringing THIS home was a good idea.” In the video, the husband explains how a lady down the neighboring property called asking for help with an orphaned baby goat. “With the owner having very few options… of course we stepped in to help,” confirming that they have decided to officially adopt the kid. When Branch arrived at the farm, the dogs became very fond of him, and so did he! “He really likes the dogs. And Evie is thrilled to have a new baby,” with video clips of Evie sniffing Branch. Furthermore, the couple revealed that Branch will have a whole pack of dogs to protect him until he’s old enough to join the farm’s goat herd. @farmofmilkandhoney Replying to @CatLoveSweet17 Thanks for asking!! So far so good!! He has a new mama and is loved #fyp #foryou #foryoupage #farmtok #farmlife #arizona #goatsoftiktok #goats #dairygoats ♬ Stories 2 – Danilo Stankovic In a follow up video, the couple reveals, “When we brought this orphaned goat home, our ultimate hope was that one of the female dogs would claim him… And Evie did right away.” In the video, Branch is seen taking “his bottle like a champ” and is revealed to just spend his whole day by Evie’s side. The story of Evie and Branch has gone viral on TikTok with one of their videos reaching 2.1 million views and 230,000 likes. Farm of Milk and Honey further shared that Evie is absolutely loving being a foster mom to baby Branch. The kid would follow Evie everywhere and is revealed to be constantly under Evie. “He loves all of the other dogs too, but Evie is a clear favorite,” the couple explains. Even though Evie is deaf, she doesn’t let this stop her from keeping the farm interesting and making sure she keeps her owners on their toes! Her huge personality certainly makes up for the lack of hearing! Her owners reveal some of her best farm moments, which include drinking milk directly from the farm cows, befriending coyotes and getting bit in the ear in return, stealing the kids’ snacks, and getting bullied by farm animals. But more than the mischief she gets into, her owners highlight how big her heart is and how she welcomes the strays that her owners bring into their farm. She even adopted a sick calf once before baby Branch came into her life! And because everyone was curious if the pair will stay together or not, the couple confirmed that “Yes, Evie and Branch will get to stay together forever here.” The couple wrote, “Evie is loving all of the attention and positive comments!! Thank you all so much! Evie and Branch are doing AMAZING!”

It’s the first time that it’s been included.

Yesterday, I had a fascinating conversation with the brilliant synthetic biologist, George Church. This rare interdisciplinary dialogue was recorded for a new podcast series coordinated by Rick Coyle, founder of Accelerator Media, a U.S. nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring curiosity and the pursuit of lifelong learning through educational media. The format of this new podcast brings together two experts from different fields for a non-hosted conversation about topics that connect or intrigue both participants. Our podcast is expected to air on January 16, 2025. George and I discussed life in the cosmos all the way from the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, to the distant future. The chemistry of life-as-we-know-it could have started shortly after the first stars formed, about 100 million years after the Big Bang, in regions enriched with heavy elements by the first exploding stars. If what we find on Earth is representative, it would have taken billions of years for a complex multicellular form of life to emerge from a soup of chemicals, explaining why we exist so late in cosmic history. Life on Earth could have had its roots on Mars, which cooled earlier than Earth because of its smaller size. The heavy bombardment of Mars could have lifted rocks that reached Earth carrying tiny astronauts in the form of Martian microbes, 4.2 billion years before Elon Musk wished to send human astronauts to Mars. If mirror life was delivered to Earth from outside, it was suppressed by terrestrial life and did not have a major impact. Aliens might be among us but we do not notice them. This reminded me of the unjustified concerns about the Large Hadron Collider at CERN producing mini black holes that might consume Earth. Cosmic-rays routinely impact hadrons in the Earth’s atmosphere with larger center-of-mass energies and did not trigger any catastrophe over the 4.6 billion years of Earth’s existence. I asked George whether there are any local clues that life could have been seeded on Earth by an extraterrestrial gardener? He agreed that this is a viable hypothesis worth exploring since there are some unexplained gaps in our understanding of how complex life emerged on Earth. Ambitious alien scientists and engineers could have aimed to seed fertile planets like Earth with self-replicating probes. If the “gardeners” were technological platforms with artificial intelligence (AI), surely — their makers would have recognized the great benefits of chemistry in using raw terrestrial materials and turning the local soup of chemicals into self-replicating machines in the form of complex-life-as-we-know-it. In that case, the vision inspired by John von Neumann’s self-replicating machines of extraterrestrial origin is terrestrial life as we know it! von Neumann proposed his abstract idea in lectures delivered at the University of Illinois in 1948 and 1949, before the discovery of the double-helix structure of the DNA molecule. Three decades after von Neumann’s lectures, Freeman Dyson suggested the concept of Astrochicken in his book “Disturbing the Universe.” Dyson imagined a spacecraft weighing a kilogram and representing a mix of biology, microelectronics and artificial intelligence that makes self-replicating probes in space. I confessed to George that I am at awe with biological life. After all, the human brain consumes 20 Watts and does better on many tasks than the best AI systems we have developed so far which consume gigawatts of power. Multi-modal analysis is at the unresolved cutting-edge of Machine Learning analysis, whereas the human brain routinely combines data from our eyes, ears and touch. I asked George about his expectations for the future of humanity. Only one century has passed since the discovery of quantum-mechanics and so we might only have another century left before our civilization will destroy itself technologically. George added that our rate of technological advances is accelerating and the existential risks are growing fast. The end of human history on Earth will likely occur well before the Sun will boil off all oceans on Earth in a billion years. I noted that the key for survival would be in our ability to escape in a habitable space platform from the rock we were born on. Humanity could survive as long as it will shift priority from investing 2.4 trillion dollars a year on military budget to investing the same amount of money on space exploration. I do not expect peace-loving hippies to rule the world. Instead, my realistic hope is that discovering aliens as smarter students in our class of intelligent technological civilization, will inspire us to do better. Our Messiah may arrive from another star. Regarding our future, George noted that the human brain will likely be augmented and become much more powerful in the coming decades. He also believes that our generation will be the first to have the option of not dying because synthetic biology will be able to repair the steady damage to our bodies within the coming decades. Given his forecast, George and I agreed to continue our conversation in the coming millennia. I wonder what we might talk about in a million years, when science and technology will be far beyond what we imagine today. I do not mind adding alien scientists to the conversation. But I will insist on a remote setup for that podcast recording, as I worry about the aliens infecting George and me with mirror pathogens. Live long and prosper! The post Is Terrestrial Life a Von Neumann Machine of Extraterrestrial Origin? appeared first on Anomalien.com.

Just days before his historic inauguration, President-elect Donald Trump vowed to make America strong and respected again in a video ad obtained exclusively by Blaze News on Friday. The ad, titled "Make America Respected Again," is part of a series of videos released by Team Trump ahead of the inauguration on January 20. "We're going to have a country that's going to be strong and respected again," Trump said in the video. "We're going to have a country where the taxes are going down. America will be feared and respected again." As well as ahead of the upcoming inauguration, the ad was released after the first week of confirmation hearings for some of Trump's nominees, who he says will usher in a new "Golden Age." Some of the most notable confirmation hearings this week were for Pam Bondi, Trump's nominee for attorney general, and Pete Hegseth, who was nominated to head the Department of Defense. Both nominees were handpicked by the president to restore faith in American institutions that have declined during the Biden administration. If confirmed to run the DOJ, Bondi vowed to eliminate the political weaponization in the department that has caused many Americans to lose faith. "I will fight every day to restore confidence and integrity to the Department of Justice and each of its components," Bondi said during her confirmation hearing Wednesday. "The partisanship, the weaponization, will be gone. America will have one tier of justice for all."Hegseth made similar commitments on restoring confidence in the Department of Defense after years of low morale and lackluster recruitment under President Joe Biden. “The Department of Defense under Donald Trump will achieve peace through strength," Hegseth said during his confirmation hearing Tuesday. "And in pursuing these, America First national security goals will remain patriotically apolitical and stridently constitutional.""Unlike the current administration, politics should play no part in military matters," Hegseth added. "We are not Republicans. We are not Democrats. We are American warriors. Our standards will be high, and they will be equal."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Israel's security Cabinet convened Friday to vote on a ceasefire deal after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed an agreement had been reached that would pause the 15-month war with Hamas in Gaza and release dozens of hostages.

President-elect Donald Trump's team is finalizing a series of executive orders on immigration that are expected to be issued shortly after he is sworn in, CNN reported on Friday, citing two people familiar with the matter. The measures include U.S. Immigration and Customs...

President-elect Donald Trump's planned immigration crackdown will be in the spotlight during a U.S. Senate confirmation hearing on Friday for his Homeland Security secretary pick, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican who mirrors his hardline views.

A Russian missile attack killed at least four people and damaged an educational facility in the city of Kryvyi Rih in southern-central Ukraine on Friday, the regional governor said.At least five others were hurt, and three of them were in a serious condition in hospital,...